


Myrrh and Juniper

by doomcanary



Series: Conquest [4]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1338589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomcanary/pseuds/doomcanary





	Myrrh and Juniper

Arthur knows what an odd tableau he must make; what a rich set of symbols a prince, a dagger and an empty table are. The blade lies perfectly aligned with the grain of the oak, a compass needle, steadily fixed. It is lying on the self-same line Merlin's pale body created. If he were still there, it would have been lying on his belly, on that smooth, taut expanse of skin.

Arthur's fist hits the table hard, making the dagger jump and spin as if it really is a compass. Why, why does he have to do this, how does Merlin get to throw questions like _why_ in his face while Arthur gets no choice? Why is it Merlin who can turn his face away, lie there still and perfect on the tabletop, everything Arthur wants and nothing he can have?

He shuts his eyes against that image. _You don't own my fucking thoughts_ , Merlin's mouth had said, but there on his belly, so tight as he arched over the table, his cock had lain thick and dark with blood. Merlin's body spoke a different spell; it said _You don't own them. I want you to pillage them_. And he'd wanted, oh how he had wanted, to work that magic; and yet he knew he couldn't, not as Merlin wanted him to. The tip of Arthur's blade had touched Merlin, and only then did his eyes widen and his cock shrink; only then did Arthur feel the twisting grip of self-hatred in his gut. He knows still, as he turns in disgust from the empty table and the disarranged blade, that for all the choices he offers Merlin, he himself has none.

 

“I'm not fucking doing it. I'm not,” mutters Merlin.

“Speak up, Merlin,” says Gaius. “I'm not as young as I was.”

“Nothing,” says Merlin, dissembling with a smile. “Just me.”

“Just Arthur?” says Gaius knowingly. “Everyone hates their job, Merlin. Just get on with it.”

Merlin has to sit down and look away. The sheer depth of the disparity between Gaius's Arthur and his chokes him. It's a full two seconds before he can get a breath into his chest.

Just get on with it. The sooner he starts, the sooner it will end. He unfolds the parchment again.

> I. Brew one quart of juniper water for Gaius's stores.

  
Merlin goes to the herbals shelf, and takes down the second volume of Gaius's recipe books. He's seen the one he's looking for before, while flicking through for other things. Agrimony, myrrh, juniper... balm of Gilead too; Merlin's eyes narrow. This is no herbal tonic; it's a potion for protection. Against magic. What the hell does Arthur want?

“Contrary to what you might think, Merlin, you're not the only one who has to work in here,” says Gaius, bustling up behind him. “Out of the way.”

Merlin dumps the book on a table, and goes to the ingredients shelf. A few minutes later, the room is filled with the rich warm scent of myrrh, overlaying the herbs Gaius is crushing for a poultice. The water comes to the boil, and Merlin empties the mortar full of crushed juniper berries in; their sharp tang joins the myrrh in the air. A moment later Gaius freezes at his workbench, and raises his head.

“Merlin,” he says sharply. “What are you doing making that?”

“Arthur wants it,” he says. “He said to give it to you.”

“Did he,” says Gaius. “Did he say anything about what it was for?”

“No.”

Gaius turns, and the look on his face sends a chill through Merlin. He's never seen Gaius truly angry before. It's frightening.

“Finish it quickly,” Gaius says coldly, “and do not let me see it again.”

“He said – Arthur said – to give it to you for the storecupboard.”

Gaius's face grows very, very grim. “Is this some kind of joke, Merlin?”

“No, I swear! It's written down right here!” He holds out the parchment, suddenly desperate. Gaius doesn't even glance at it.

“In that case, I do not care what the Prince's orders are. Camelot does not require that potion, Merlin, and in my lifetime it never will again. Get rid of it. Now.”

Merlin picks up the basin with a cloth and goes to chuck the contents in the privy. He realises half way there that he's chewing his lip. When he comes back, Gaius is boiling water on the fire for tea; his back is to Merlin, and he looks old, and somehow small.

“Get out, Merlin,” he says, without rancour. “Give me some peace.”

 

Giving Gaius peace is easy enough. Task II is “Count the number of cobblestones in the direct line between the mounted statue and the south wall of the main courtyard.” He starts once, and loses count half way; the cobbles are not quite laid in a grid, and the pattern is eye-aching. He swears under his breath, looking down at his feet.

“Merlin?” says Gwen's voice. “Have you dropped something?”

“No.”

“Er... what are you doing, then?”

“Some stupid job for Arthur,” Merlin says. “Counting the bloody cobblestones.”

Gwen pulls a face. But as ever, she only seems to want to help. “Well, you can tell when you've got half way,” she says. “The stones go darker.”

Merlin walks back to the plinth the statue rests on, and looks across the court. Gwen's right; in the middle of the view there's a dark, discoloured patch of cobbles.

“I never noticed that,” he says. “What is it?”

“It's always been there,” says Gwen. “It's where the fires used to be.”

Merlin is three stones from the foot of the wall when he realises that Gwen doesn't mean the great Samhain bale-fire, or even the Beltane ones; she means the fires where they used to burn warlocks, in the Purge.

He adds three to his total, scratches it onto the parchment with a bit of charcoal, then shudders and throws the charcoal away. Time for task III.

> III. Deliver the weekly basket of food from the kitchens to Alice Weaver in Pick Lane.
> 
> When you have completed all these tasks, return to me.

  
The undercook gives Merlin an old-fashioned look when he asks about the charity basket, but produces it anyway; it's a large, heavily loaded wicker one, covered with a cloth. Merlin sneaks a peek under it once he's outside the gates; a whole chicken, some raw beef wrapped in muslin, lardy cake, fruits, and a bottle of something that looks like wine. Pretty hearty stuff – he wonders if Alice is a convalescent or something.

Pick Lane is narrow and muddy, hens wandering in the road and a couple of kids playing knucklebones. Merlin asks them for Alice Weaver's house and is directed to a small lime-clad house – more a hovel, really - with a ramshackle lean-to at one side. He knocks, and a woman opens the door.

“Are you Alice?” he says. “I've brought the basket from the castle."

She grins disoncertingly at him. “You haven't been down before, then?”

“No,” says Merlin, giving her his best bewildered smile.

“Alice is lying-in, love, has been a month. I'm her sister. Come in, I suppose.”

“Ooh, Ellen, you've let a boy in!” says another voice as Merlin steps into the dimness of the hut. A gust of distinctly feminine laughter follows the remark.

“It's all right, he's from the castle,” says Ellen.

“And not a bad looker too!” Another laugh. Merlin stars to feel very exposed, and suspects he's blushing.

“Shut up, the pair of you. Here, take the baby, Sarah, let's see what they've sent.”

An older woman bustles out of the shadows – Merlin can make out figures within them, and a curtain obscuring one corner of the room – and takes the basket from him.

“I, er,” he says. “I should leave you to it.”

“Oh no you don't,” says the woman with the basket. “Ooh, look, we can make beef tea with this, that'll be nice for you, Alice love.”

“Smashing,” says a new voice, from the direction of the curtain. “I've never had that.”

“Oh no I don't?” asks Merlin, confused and feeling very much out of his depth.

“We need some wood fetching in. If the castle are going to send us a good strong lad the least we can do is make use of him.”

Oh, great. “Where is it?”

“In the lean-to, pet.”

Merlin goes out again, blinking in the daylight, and opens the lean-to door. There's a dismantled loom at the back of it – that's why she's called Weaver, then, her husband's family must have been in the trade – and a mess of tools, along with a pile of logs in the corner. He sighs, picks up and armful, and as he's balacing a last one on top, sees something that makes him fumble and drop the lot.

A long axe with an unmistakably shaped blade is leaning against the wall, between a besom and a shovel. Merlin saw that axe on his very first day in Camelot; blackened steel flashing down over the block, the crumpled figure of the sorcerer, the gout of blood that followed it in the momentary silence before the crowd roared.

Something drops into place in his mind. Alice Weaver is lying-in; she's just had a baby. There should be half the street with her. In Ealdor, all the women of the village used to be in and out whenever one of them was confined, bringing treats and gossip and plain old company. But Alice has her mother and her two sisters, and that's all. Because her husband's the headsman, and people are afraid to come near her in case they attract Uther's eye, or a sorceror's wrath. Everyone knows there are still sorcerors in Albion, and nobody gives them up unless forced because they're as afraid of what the sorcerors will do as they are of Uther's rage.

Merlin picks up the logs again and marches determinedly into the house; nobody deserves to be left alone at a time like this. It's only when he's picking up the second load that he stops to think; what's Arthur doing, sending him down here?

A chill rolls over him. Surely Arthur isn't telling him he knows. Oh gods, can he be? Is this some twisted game, some cat-and-mouse torture that will end in Merlin's death? Was Arthur's change of heart because he saw something, did Merlin let something slip when Arthur kissed him? Merlin's breath stops in his chest again, he holds himself up on the logs, suddenly weak.

It can't be, he tells himself. Arthur is not his father's son, he's different, greater of heart. He spared Mordred when Merlin almost did not. Arthur is fallible, human, Merlin has fooled him already, so many times. Even if he thinks he knows, Merlin can talk him round.

Arthur knows why he brawled with the stable-boy, after all, but he doesn't know all of the how of it. He doesn't know Merlin whispered a spell just before they were caught; the other boy wasn't on the ground after Merlin's blow, he fell clutching his guts as pain struck through him like a knife, and Merlin smiled viciously. It was only luck that meant they were out of sight of the other stable-boys when it happened.

No, Arthur doesn't know everything. Nobody saw them. He can't know that.

Can he? The things Arthur doesn't know are... far, far fewer than Merlin used to think. Arthur seems to read him like a book, to know him inside out, as if he has magic himself. (He couldn't, surely.) Arthur seems to anticipate everything; Merlin remembers that sense of nakedness, much deeper than merely his skin. And now, without doubt, he wants Merlin to take the knowledge he's gained today back to him, so he can read the truth in Merlin like a hedge-witch reading the bones.

Merlin has treasured his knowledge, his secret; the magic. It's saved him, so many times. It will do it again if it has to, he knows.

He hopes.

 

This time, Arthur's chamber door is open. Merlin walks in.


End file.
